2001 0-7734-7361-0In Plato’s early dialogues, Socrates typically draws from his interlocutors definitions of moral terms, then demonstrates that these positions or their consequences are inconsistent with the definitions they have offered. On numerous occasions in the early dialogues, Socrates claims that this method will yield truth. This study argues that Plato entertains a theory of truth according to which consistency is sufficient for truth, rescuing him from the charge of having confused consistency with truth, and solving the puzzle of Socratic ignorance. It also suggests a new theory of Plato’s philosophical development: Middle and Late Plato did not abandon Socratic philosophy; rather, he sought to secure its foundations. The late Plato returns to Socratic method in the penultimate work of the corpus, Philebus.

2010 0-7734-3701-0This book argues that Plato’s Socrates subscribes to a coherence theory of truth, and according to that theory, there is only one fully consistent set of beliefs: the set which contains all and only true members. Thus, not only does inconsistency between two beliefs indicate that at least one of them is false, but the consistency of a belief with the other beliefs in the system suffices for its truth.